PeteF3

Overbooked match that's weirdly worked somewhat traditionally, with strict enforcement of legal tags and such, even as tables and chairs get involved. I agree that it feels like a big reset button has been hit on the Richards/Raven relationship, for reasons I can't quite figure out. It's way past time to pull the trigger on this.

They could take Parv's route and christen him the more formal-sounding "Zed-Man."

Chris Candido first speculates that RVD went to the WWF to be near his girl, but decides that he only did it because he's an asshole. Rick Rude gives some trenchant advice involving KY Jelly, as Joey does more of his stupid mugging. Raven expounds upon the idea of selling out. The Pitbulls are GRRR ANGRY--their Loud Wrestling Voice promo is pretty funny in how out of sync it is with the tone of the rest of this. Sandman will give up cigarettes and beer if he can get 5 minutes in the ring with Van Dam. Bill Alfonso is grateful to Vince McMahon for helping him clean up. Terry Funk is once again the most compelling talker in the company. Douglas declares that WWF stands for We Want Franchise, in a refreshingly brief and bitterness-free bit. Spike Dudley throws a tantrum. Louie Spicoli wants RVD to put a good word in with the Clique. Tommy Dreamer whines about how you should never sell out. Big Dick Dudley grunts. Buh Buh Ray and D-Von makes threats to RVD...and everyone else, in a funny segue. Perry Saturn tries to say he doesn't give a fuck what RVD does but he sure doesn't act like it. The Big Don calls off the FBI's workout, and Tracy Smothers laments that Rob Van Ham will never be a paisan now--Rich wonders why we're talking about Jean-Claude Van Damme. "Are you down with Gordon Solie on Monday nights, is that what this is?!" Bill Alfonso gloats about all the new checks he's getting because of where RVD wrestles now. Chris Chetti cuts an incredibly wooden promo. Francine's done a lot of things for money, but not that. A neckbraced Beulah cuts a hairdryer-aided promo. Balls Mahoney is angry. Tod Gordon calls out RVD's business sense and then suspends him indefinitely. Definitely one of the better Pulp Fictions--some of the sellout talk is funny but I liked how they treated his Raw appearance as the ultimate act of betrayal, and I liked how the ECW heels stayed true to their characters--along with the FBI, Gertner and the Dudleys were the highlight here.

We're just about nearing the end here--Larry Burton had already run off Dave Brown and temporarily ran off Lance Russell, which was explained on TV as Lance refusing to work with Dutch Mantell. Mantell took the opportunity to repeatedly show clips of him beating Jerry Lawler in 1982, then attempted to impose his will on Stacy before Lawler makes the save. A really good, heated brawl breaks out, which ends with Lawler and referee Downtown Bruno getting the Shoo Baby treatment. Dutch sends in a video promising to embarrass Lawler in front of his few remaining friends. It's definitely a throwback, to-the-well feud that in some ways is just as bad as WCW rehashing Piper and Hogan, but Dutch and Lawler are far more compelling in their old age than Roddy is in his.

This got a lot better as it went along to a pretty heartstopping conclusion, and with me not having a problem with Kanemoto's performance, I may well have liked this better than anyone else. Kanemoto wasn't as good as Otani but this was a more even and back-and-forth match, and Takaiwa's gimmick of being a cruiser who wrestles like a heavyweight stands out as unique as compared to Tajiri working like an underneath guy. Both guys do a great job of making the multiple-powerbomb spot look realistic, which is incredibly hard to do (no blatantly grabbing onto the powerbomber's arms here).

Always fun to watch two Japanese male wrestlers wear their emotions on their sleeves like this. Otani's confident but freaks out with every two-count--both for him and against him. Tajiri is woefully overmatched and can only fight to keep his head above water, but busts out a dragon suplex for a 3-count and another holy-shit, audible-gasp moment for me. This may be another case of NJPW cute-for-cuteness-sake upset booking in hindsight, but it worked for me. Tajiri's celebration and Otani's reaction are gold, too.

Good segment to put more heat on the NWO, and what heat they draw in Flair Country. No Horsemen in the building--they all got thrown out because McMichael and Kevin Greene got into it backstage, and it's also explained that Piper isn't there either.

A pretty good segment that hints at a promising feud to come, that we never really get. Some subtle touches that I like--Syxx *did* have the upper hand on Flair the previous night, one of the only long sustained runs of offense the NWO had. Flair: "You, my friend, are a fly in the ointment--and I'm gonna kick your flyweight ass!" They have a quick pull-apart and Syxx runs off.

The crutch has indeed eclipsed the high heel shoe as wrestling's most deadly weapon. Jim Ross relays to Austin and Michaels, in the midst of another near-brawl, that Gorilla Monsoon has ordered them to team up as partners next week to go after the tag titles. This comes after segments earlier in the night with Michaels trying to recruit Ken Shamrock as his partner, and Austin, out of obligation of needing a partner at all, trying to recruit Harvey Wippleman. This does not sit well with either man and we have yet another pull-apart. Part of me wishes the Hart Foundation could have stuck around and we'd get an off-the-air shot of them laughing it up to close out Raw. This was an action-packed episode that also offered a ton of things to keep you tuned in next week, between Shawn Michaels' return and the possibility of Paul Bearer's secret being revealed.

Undertaker talks about Faarooq playing the "race card"--UT, like Stephen Colbert, doesn't see color. Not a particularly good way to go with this promo, but what do you do to hype an Undertaker-Faarooq match? Undertaker refuses to address the secret that Paul Bearer revealed the existence of last week. Slow-burn storytelling, whatever happened to it? It's mid-May and we're beginning to hype something that won't be paid off until October and won't *really* be paid off until March! Bearer is about to spill the beans about the death of Undertaker's parents, but Undertaker, in a rare position of vulnerability, asks Paul for more time. Bearer graciously gives Undertaker another week. Of course this whole storyline was ridiculous, but it ended up working against all odds, and we're at the beginning of what may be the run of Percy Pringle's career.

As mentioned, these started the previous week and I threw an internal fit at the end of Raw, somehow blaming this commercial (which aired right before the final segment at like 5 till the hour) for the show running long. I was pissed we didn't get the end of the segment and I was pissed we didn't get the surprise, which we probably weren't going to get anyway. So I have an inherent bias against these clips, even though I did love Super Soakers as a kid.

You know, take that line out and this is a hell of a segment from both guys. It was an incredibly needless digression because Shawn was actually on-point for the rest of this segment, keeping things mostly about the program and offering only one other generic personal shot. Bret's promo is fantastic and I have to actually credit him for holding it together and no-selling that line--anything else on-camera would have just drawn attention to it. This is a very old-school set-up--heel issues stipulation challenge, babyface agrees with a caveat--and I wouldn't be surprised if this whole thing was Cornette's idea (the other heels being handcuffed is an old southern wrasslin' staple as well). I too am fascinated as to how this would have been booked had the match gone off. There's no other possible result besides Shawn losing, but HBK losing in ten minutes regardless of whatever overbooked clusterfuck would lead up to it seems unthinkable.

The post-Raw scene was shown the next weekend on Livewire and Superstars, so fans did have a clue of what happened. And a wild scene it is, pretty reminiscent of the DDP/Savage angle at Slamboree with the hitting-and-running, crutch use, and numbers game.

Never fear--RVD will be back on Raw soon enough. He does, as you'd expect, look good in highlight form.

Yes, Mick as has been usual has his finger on the pulse of where wrestling and kayfabe are going, to a greater degree than just about anyone else. It's kind of a crime that Foley never had any kind of shot at a position in creative, because I think he was the kind of experienced and creative voice that wrestling could have used in the 21st century. A tremendous start to a great series--Mick bares his soul but gets off a number of funny lines ("Now I'm not saying I didn't take money to eat other strange things...") as well.

We've come full circle, as Shawn Michaels is now impersonating Stevie Richards. Other than that, this is another hot segment with two awesome pull-aparts between Austin and Shawn--all while Owen, Davey Boy, and the Anvil cackle with delight.

Not a workrate classic, but just about every other note is hit letter-perfect here to garner the maximum possible crowd response. The NWO know when to stooge, when to play it cool, and when to play running cowardly heels. A lot of the spots are stuff we've seen before but the way the respective signature spots "edited" together is kind of clever--like Flair doing the Flair Flip into the cross body off the top, only to fly into a common Hall spot--the catch and blockbuster suplex. Without wearing out its welcome we go to the finish, with Piper decking Randy Anderson in a cool moment, a cool teased spot with Nash hitting Flair from the back to set up the Outsider's Edge only for that to get cut off by Ric, and all three babyfaces laying out the heels at once, like a classic all-figure-fours spot from the old-school Horsemen or all of Misawa's Army grabbing submissions on Jumbo's team. Nick Patrick counts the 3 and the Wolfpack are all left laying, as decisively beaten as you'll ever see them.

Mark your calendars--Mongo McMichael carries a match. He actually does the best he can, and it's a testament to how hot WCW was that the crowd was actually into the closing stretch of this, despite a ridiculous 17-minute bell-to-bell time. Cute finish as Gilbert Brown prevents McMichael from using the briefcase, but as Mark Curtis is trying to shoo him away after he was previously distracted by Debra, Jeff Jarrett runs out with a duplicate which McMichael uses to get the win. I do like how WCW tended to use celebrities to put wrestlers over rather than the WWF moving heaven and earth trying to put the celeb over--you hear that, Russo? Reggie was a legendary player but as a wrestling participant I don't actually recall this being a huge deal--it did get some mainstream pub, but it also felt kind of overshadowed by the presence of Rodman.

This was terrific--DDP gets in a killer line about Savage's "previous engagement" washing Hogan's car and kissing his ass. That's enough for Savage to tell the B-teamers and Bischoff to back off. DDP goes nuts with the broken crutch and this crowd is JACKED--fuck, I'M marking out 18 years later. Even Bischoff gets nailed. Norton finally gets a shot in and the NWO swarm Page's perpetually injured ribs, but for once a babyface is ready to make a save, as the Giant runs everyone off.

Very good match, in some ways a real throwback for being so mat-based at a time when almost all promotions were getting away from that. Even though the crowd reactions are sort of backwards from what WCW was hoping for, they were really into this as well and picked up on the psychology of Dragon fighting to avoid the Regal Stretch. Even Onoo is used well--he does one interference spot to get over that Dragon doesn't want him getting involved, and then plays just enough of a role in the finish that he clearly costs Dragon the match, while Regal still gets credit for the finishing blow without making the ending all about Onoo. This is an instance where I'm going to junk all my old complaints about Dragon not bothering to work a character or guys like Malenko being tone-deaf with regard to the crowd. The crowd wasn't reacting "properly," but Dragon and Regal failed to let that get to them and just went out and worked a solid match. Good for them.

Re: Bix's question about the uptick in Raw ratings: Raw's ratings spiked heavily in early '95 due to the Lawrence Taylor angle. LT was huge for TV ratings even though it didn't translate into PPV buys.

Closing stretch of what's actually a pretty good match. Dreamer gets the win with an enzuigiri, but Spicoli lays out Beulah with a DVD afterward. This is put over big and seems like an attempt at re-doing the Douglas/Pitbull halo angle, but it sort of rings hollow after all the times Beulah and Francine have both been destroyed already. Where were all these people when Francine got Superbombed, huh??! Also, this isn't it a fair criticism but I was pissed when this ended because I thought for sure this was going to be the Lawler angle, dammit.

Other than a few advanced moves from the Eliminators, this could easily have taken place on a regional Midwest or southern indy circa 1989. The FBI are so good at shtick that this doesn't feel like a '90s east coast crowd at ALL. Other than "whoo"-ing on the chops, this is a crowd that seems emotionally invested in who wins or loses. They boo the shtick of the heels, cheer for the Eliminators comebacks, and pepper the match with "U-S-A" chants that I'm pretty sure aren't meant to be ironic. Rich is a bastard at ringside and my biggest criticism is the lousy sound quality doesn't allow us to hear what he says during his pre-match spiel on the mic. He knows how to build to his interference and payoff too, and it results in a great pop when Saturn finally levels him with a spin kick and sends him flying off the apron. Easily the best ECW match of '97 and actually now one of my favorite in the history of the promotion--a testament to the timing and psychology of Smothers and Guido. I love the little bits of cross-promotion symmetry you only get on Yearbooks, with Ricky Morton and Tracy Smothers both providing out-of-nowhere awesome performances from two southern wrasslin' staples, in decidedly non-southern environments, on opposite sides of the earth at the same time.

Morton was a jarring sight here, but this is easily the best he's looked since the heyday of SMW. He bleeds, he bumps, he executes his offense, he gets over, and his timing with his partners and opponents is remarkably smooth for his FMW experience level. "Smoothness" actually is a running theme throughout this match, which is odd to say for FMW. But the execution, even on complicated stuff like Hayabusa's springboard flying attacks, is almost letter-perfect. And the timing throughout, down the stretch of the finishing sequence in particular, is superb. The only weird spot is Hayabusa and Awesome sort of staring at each other for awhile as Awesome is on the floor, but even that serves a purpose: it's so the crowd can see the stereo topes from Morton and Fuji. *Then* and only then does Hayabusa launch himself at Awesome. As of May this really feels like a top-10 MOTYC--remains to be seen if it stays there.

Yeah, underwhelming finish to Nitro. Maybe they were half-assing it because of the early timeslot. I don't know how anyone could seriously believe that Bischoff was going to interview the real Sting.